vulgarize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make vulgar or coarse; lower; debase.
to vulgarize standards of behavior.
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to make (a technical or abstruse work) easier to understand and more widely known; popularize.
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to translate (a work) from a classical language into the vernacular.
verb
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to make commonplace or vulgar; debase
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to make (something little known or difficult to understand) widely known or popular among the public; popularize
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of vulgarize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In “Children of Light,” his Hollywood novel, he wrote: “There are people at this table who could vulgarize pure light.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2020
James Ellroy served as one of two grand masters for the awards, saying, "We are here to vulgarize literature."
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2015
The waves of vulgarity this picture gave off made me have the strong instinct that he was going to vulgarize the office of the presidency.
From Time Magazine Archive
Many Britons had feared that televising the coronation would vulgarize it, but even the London Times observed that "posterity may well judge the telecast one of the wisest acts."
From Time Magazine Archive
The incident was of a dignity which the supernatural has by no means always had, and which has been more than ever lacking in it since the manifestations of professional spiritualism began to vulgarize it.
From Questionable Shapes by Howells, William Dean
Things are put a good deal more strongly in the film, although they have not vulgarized but only underscored James’ subtext.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2018
Ninotchka’s personhood is diminished, even as the composer’s work is vulgarized.
From New York Times ● Aug. 19, 2016
And, in a vulgarized form Rand would almost certainly reject, they have spread even further since her death in 1982.
From Salon ● Oct. 6, 2014
On it he croons in a talky flow about a manuscript — or is it a love letter? this song? his career? — that he fears will be vulgarized by commercial forces.
From New York Times ● Aug. 20, 2011
And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing.
From The Lost Girl by Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
That last attraction might sound like a waste of space, a frivolous, vulgarizing touch.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2021
The original film was made with brazenly mercantile yet artistically sound intentions, and, despite its vulgarizing touches, it’s a crudely effective story about tradition and modernity, misogyny and resistance.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 1, 2019
Or Davy Crockett movies for vulgarizing Tennessee history -- and sentimentalizing bears.
From Time Magazine Archive
Allen Tate dismissed Yevtushenko as "a ham actor," whose performances are a "vulgarizing of poetry."
From Time Magazine Archive
Busken Huet has called him "a miserable character, a personified mediocrity, a vulgar and vulgarizing spirit."
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. VIII by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
